Once described as the bard of the urban underbelly, protean "downtown" performance artist Eric Bogosian established himself as one of the wittiest, most incisive chroniclers of the bloat and sleaze of the 1980s. In a series of highly acclaimed one-man shows, he combined black humor and an aggressive, confrontational energy with an underlying charm to make pointed social commentary about the environment, racism, sexism and human behavior in general. Bogosian had responded to an ad to learn the commodities racket in the late 70s, but a job answering phones at The Kitchen, an avant-garde dance and performance space in Manhattan, turned up in the nick of time to right his course. His 1977 off-off Broadway debut "Careful Moment" was the first step on the road to many super-charged, bug-eyed solo performances, featuring a universe of hucksters and psychotics as diverse as a self-congratulating British pop star (modeled on Keith Richards), a scatological derelict and a cheating yuppie executive. Three of his one-man shows ("Drinking in America," "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll," "Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead") earned him well-deserved OBIE Awards. Bogosian made his film debut in 1982's "Born in...

Once described as the bard of the urban underbelly, protean "downtown" performance artist Eric Bogosian established himself as one of the wittiest, most incisive chroniclers of the bloat and sleaze of the 1980s. In a series of highly acclaimed one-man shows, he combined black humor and an aggressive, confrontational energy with an underlying charm to make pointed social commentary about the environment, racism, sexism and human behavior in general. Bogosian had responded to an ad to learn the commodities racket in the late 70s, but a job answering phones at The Kitchen, an avant-garde dance and performance space in Manhattan, turned up in the nick of time to right his course. His 1977 off-off Broadway debut "Careful Moment" was the first step on the road to many super-charged, bug-eyed solo performances, featuring a universe of hucksters and psychotics as diverse as a self-congratulating British pop star (modeled on Keith Richards), a scatological derelict and a cheating yuppie executive. Three of his one-man shows ("Drinking in America," "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll," "Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead") earned him well-deserved OBIE Awards.

Bogosian made his film debut in 1982's "Born in Flames," and though he achieved his highest profile as the combative late-night radio host Barry Champlain in "Talk Radio" (1988), which he adapted from his stage play with director Oliver Stone, he has acted in over a dozen features, as well as some critically acclaimed work for TV. He portrayed Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, a leading character in Robert Altman's TV remake of "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" (CBS, 1988), and two years later starred as a former US embassy official returning to Vietnam to help organize "The Last Flight Out" (NBC). Since director John McNaughton captured "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll" on film as a 1991 feature, Bogosian has compiled an eclectic resume, playing such parts as a Nixon-esque senator investigating witchcraft in Paul Schrader's "Witch Hunt" (HBO, 1994), a psychotic villain in "Under Siege 2: The Dark Territory" (1995) and a literary agent in the film adaptation of Jon Robin Baitz's play "The Substance of Fire" (1996), in addition to voicing a Damon Runyonesque bird for the animated "Arabian Knight" (1995). He also showed up briefly in Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry" (1997) as the title character's religious brother-in-law.

Still, Bogosian continues to make his strongest impact as a writer. Until the mid-90s, he had focused his biting exegeses on things urban, but beginning with his 1994 play "subUrbia," he returned to his roots to explore the nightmare of middle-class anomie against a backdrop of over-fertilized lawns. He didn't act in the play or in the 1997 movie version, but his voice was unmistakably there, particularly in the character of Jeff, the thinker of the bunch and recent college dropout who has rejoined his friends on their suburban corner next to the 7-Eleven. Capturing the slang and posturing of a world where there isn't much to do but "smoke a doob and hang out," Bogosian, director Richard Linklater and a top-notch cast delivered a very watchable picture somewhat hampered by its stage origins and excessive length. If "subUrbia" eluded the 20-year-old crowd because of its older, more cerebral and ruminative feel, the writer dealt straight from his gut for his next play "Griller" (1997), set around a backyard grill during the 4th of July (and 50th birthday) barbecue of the main character Gussie. Extremely funny, "Griller" was also unrelentingly dark in its expose of a complacent, materially sold-out baby boomer hitting a metaphorical brick wall.

Bogosian continued to act in films, although his roles were not as prominent or showy as in the 1980s and 1990s. He had a thankless role as a college professor in the teen-skewed would-be thriller "Gossip" (2000), then essayed a small character role in the pleasing indie "Igby Goes Down" (2002) before tackling Atom Egoyan's serious exploration of Armenians coming to grips with their country's past, "Ararat" (2002).

A newly prolific Bogosian reemerged in high profile films in 2003, including a supporting turn as a villain in "Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle" and in an uneven performance, as least as far as the consistency of his accent went, as the sinister real life L.A. nightclub owner and alleged drug kingpin Eddie Nash in "Wonderland," a recounting of the 1981 drug related murders on Los Angeles' Wonderland Avenue involving porn legend John Holmes. Next, he narrated the documentary "Khatchaturian" (2003), about Armenian composer Aram Khatchaturian who, as a communist functionary in the Soviet Union, had great influence over the course of Russian music while maintaining friendships with dissident composers. In "Blade: Trinity" (2004), Bogosian provided a short, but entertaining stint as Bentley Tittle in the third installment of the B-movie trilogy, a movie that appealed more to videogame aficionados than mainstream moviegoers.

Made Off-Broadway debut in double-bill of "Men Inside" and "Voices of America" at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theatre

2003:

Played Eddie Nash in "Wonderland," a film based on the Wonderland Murders starring Val Kilmer

1985:

Played title role in "The Healer" episode of CBS' "The Twilight Zone"

1996:

Portrayed an agent in Daniel Sullivan's "The Substance of Fire"; adaptated by Jon Robin Baitz from his play

1997:

Reportedly made uncredited contributions to the script for "Mad City"

1994:

Surprised the theatrical world with a play set in and, entitled "subUrbia"; directed by Robert Falls at NYC's Lincoln Center; later adapted as a 1996 film directed by Richard Linklater

1983:

Wrote and starred in one-man play, "FunHouse" at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theatre; directed by his wife Jo Anne Bonney

VIEW ALL MILESTONES

Education

University of Chicago:
Chicago, Illinois - 1971

Oberlin College:
Oberlin, Ohio - 1976

Notes

"I do believe that if you keep looking at the nasty stuff you don't want to look at, you can live with it better. It's better than just ignoring it." --Eric Bogosian quoted in Rolling Stone, January 12, 1989

"There might be some point in each character where they're the same, and that point is Eric. And I move out from that point into all these different people. The violent guys I play have something that's nice about them, and the nice guys I play have a mean streak." --Bogosian quoted in New York, December 12, 1988

"I'm not a fun guy. . . I'm not the type of person who will do anything to have people laugh, to have someone run up to you and ask for your autograph. I try to do nice characters sometimes, but they change on me. So the challenge is to do the dark guys, the very dark guys." --Eric Bogosian to THE NEW YORK TIMES, September 30, 1983

"Bogosian's piece ['Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll'] blares away like an urban remix of 'Spoon River Anthology'--with studs, beggars, yuppies and poets all taking turns. These are difficult people to accept, a collection of curmudgeons you pray will never sit next to you on a bus or subway . . . but they raise difficult questions--about love, about money, about the future of the planet. They are the products of an angry mind that spits out characters like a manic copy machine." --Hillel Italie in Daily News. September 10, 1991

About his wife's role in his career: "She tells me when a bit isn't working. I do a lot of stuff on the road, so when I go to various audiences there's a tendency to go where the audience wants you to go. You hear the audience laughing and you don't hear the audience being moved. So laughter will pull you toward sillier and sillier stuff. She tends to strip away stuff that's obvious or silly.

"I was a bum when she met me. I was doing nothing all day long. Years later she told me she had never met anyone who did as little in a day as I did. In 1980, I would get up around noon and think about doing something and then not do it." --Bogosian to Nancy Churnin in Los Angeles Times, November 3, 1993

"In some ways, these plays ('subUrbia', 'Griller') are the real challenge. It's easy to write about colorful, extreme urban characters who aren't you. I'm the classic suburban guy who moves to the city and looks around at all these wild people and then writes about them. And then other suburban people come to see the show and say, 'Yeah, man, you really got that drunk guy down pat.' When the truth is, none of us really had any experience as a wino." --Bogosian, quoted in Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1998

Jo Anne Bonney. Graphic designer, director. Married in October 1980, six weeks after they met; Australian; met when she hired him for $75 to record a disc jockey's voice for a short film she was making in 1980.